Re: OT: Punctuation
From: | Tristan McLeay <zsau@...> |
Date: | Saturday, January 17, 2004, 2:06 |
On Sat, 17 Jan 2004, Trebor Jung wrote:
> I have a few questions on punctuation:
>
> In different posts, I notice the following:
> My name is...
> My name is ...
> My name is . . .
> Is it a matter of choice, or are there rules governing spacing and
> punctuation...
In variable-width fonts, an ellipsis is not spaced the same as three
fullstops placed after each other. Because of this, for some reason some
people put spaces between them (which is too large a space at least in
Times Roman, Palatino and Computer Modern Roman---it's about half-way
between). Personally, I think it looks bad in fixed-width font (and even
worse in variable-width ones, but no worse than having three dots), but
that's just my opinion. (When using Word, it auto-corrects three dots
into an ellipsis. In (La)TeX, typing \dots gets you an ellipsis.)
As to whether there's a space before it, my guideline is that if it's the
end of a sentence, because the first one serves as a fullstop, put it
against the text, otherwise, have a space, hence: I dunno ... I think he
left...
--
Tristan
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